My world of solipsism is crashing down around my head. Today I received an actual comment on my ramblings about probability, God, and my lovely nickel standing on its edge. The gist of the comment is that I should stray into rationality, certainly a well meaning and sincere suggestion.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationality-historicist/
Upon reading this anonymous comment, I immediately found the above site which had some wonderful comments on the historicism of rationality.
Because of the long history of rationality, logic, and the metaphysical basis of both, it is important to realize that these are constructs of human beings, much like the career of Hannah Montana.
In order to correctly discuss rationality, in other words, it is necessary for two or more humans to agree on definitions. It is precisely at the point of this agreement where problems begin.
For example, there is a nice article in Wikipedia about rationality, but a criticism of this article is that it does not cite any authoritative sources. This is a standard criticism found in scientific and scholarly writings. The article above, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is interesting because it references an important work (to me) by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I highly recommend this series of essays to any student of philosophy and science.
Again, Mr. Kuhn is not without his critics and criticisms, one of which is that his work promotes relativism (a philosophical term, not to be confused with relativity.) Kuhn defends himself in an appendix to his work.
I have no intention of trying to defend or explain any of this, only to say that it is fascinating to find so much disagreement on what many would say is logical and obvious. What Kuhn thoroughly points out, as do others, is that scientific research is full of examples of findings that were anything but obvious, and resulted in views that were fought over, sometimes for years, before any consensus was reached.
If scientific inquiry, possibly the most successful rational undertaking of humankind, is fraught with such disagreement in its development, what can we say of less rigourous categories of knowledge?
Even Mathematics, a field that is based upon logic and proof, is subject to the same disagreements found in the sciences. For an illuminating work that among other things, illustrates such disagreement in mathematics, see George Lakoff's collaboration, "Where Mathematics Comes From".
No doubt there is much to be gained from the rational pursuit of many fields of knowledge.
I thank the commentator for the anonymous comment, and hope that the above assures you that I have not taken rationality lightly. As for my own writings here being pseudointellectual and my having gotten probability wrong, you are probably right.
